This is one of our favourite spinach recipes for its deliciousness and for its multi-purpose end use. Spinach balls or koftas is an all-in-one meal that is beaming with nutrients and flavour. You can have it as a snack or add the balls to a gravy and yield a spinach kofta curry! Spinach is one of the easiest vegetables to handle. It is highly nutritious but it often carries a bitter flavour that is perfectly masked in this preparation. This is yet another of our spinach recipes that are packed with proteins along with the goodness of spinach and accompanying ingredients. It is easy to prepare and cook and can easily be part of your snacks, lunch, or dinner. Pack it for your family members or savour along with dear ones. It is diabetic friendly, kids friendly, nutrient-rich, and great for expecting and new mothers.

We added grated raw banana to our spinach balls recipe as they are highly nutritious, provide ample of soluble fibre (complex carbohydrates! yes give us some more), and have multiple health benefits that go beyond their nutritional profile. Raw banana or green banana flour is also used as a baby weaning food in India. Adding raw banana to the batter mix has made our recipe a complete meal in itself. So go guilt-free and let yourself and your kids have them as much as they want. You can replace raw banana with potatoes or with any other tuber of your choice.

Ingredients – Spinach Recipes – Palak Kofta

(Serves 3-4 people)

1 Medium sized bunch of spinach

1 Raw Banana – grated

1 cup Besan or Gram Flour or Chick Pea Flour. You can also replace the flour with freshly ground soaked lentils. This would require pre-soaking of lentils for about 2 hours and then grinding them to a fine paste to make the batter.

1 Tablespoon Sooji or Semolina

Salt to taste

1 Teaspoon Turmeric

1 Teaspoon Cumin Seeds

1 Teaspoon Coriander Seeds

1 Teaspoon Amchur (Dry Mango Powder). This can also be replaced with Anardana (Dry Pomegranate Powder)

1 inch Ginger – finely grated

1 Medium sized Onion – Finely chopped

Pure Peanut Oil to Fry

Pinch of Asafoetida

Method of Preparation (30 mins) – Spinach Recipes – Palak Kofta

Excludes Soaking time (~ 2 Hours) should you decide to use freshly ground lentils for the batter.

Wash and finely chop spinach. Keep it aside

Fine chop rest of the ingredients and grate the raw banana.

Add all the ingredients to a deep bowl and mix them well. Slowly add water while stirring to result in a batter mixture that would drop in lumps when a spoonful of batter is raised to a certain height.

Heat oil in a deep pan for frying. Again take only the required amount of oil for this preparation. This would help you to avoid any wastage and also save you from reusing the leftover oil (which is bad for the heart due to a high content of unsaturated fats. We will discuss this in another post)

Make the batter into balls and start adding them to hot oil one by one till the pan has enough balls.

Now let this batch of balls cook well on medium heat. This will ensure that balls are cooked from inside out and avoid any burnt balls from the outside. High heat sometimes leads to a burnt outside with uncooked insides.

Start taking them out one by one. Let them cool down. Enjoy with a sauce or your choice or as it is!